“Rebels have their own way of doing things; the jianghu has its own rules too.”

Walking on against the wind and snow, rounding a bend in the mountain path, the woman named Xigua spoke softly. Her hair stirred in the wind and snow; her features still carried a hint of youthfulness, but her words just now hadn’t been careless at all.

“Once you’ve made your stand in this world, a father’s death is a debt that can’t simply be set aside — not something you can just choose to let go of. After I go back to the Miao territory, you’ll need to keep an eye on the three Qi brothers.”

“I heard about what happened tonight. No fighting broke out — I’m glad.” Ning Yi, walking slightly behind her, nodded, then let out a faint sigh. “What was that about, three blades and six holes?”

“The fifth Qi brother has real talent — he might accomplish great things one day. Being able to beat me but choosing not to fight right now was the wise move.”

The Qi family had originally had five brothers; after the massacre that wiped out their household, only the second, third, and fifth remained — the fifth being Qi Xinhan. Xigua paused.

“As for three blades and six holes, that’s not going to kill anyone. I do feel some guilt, personally, over killing Uncle Qi. If it can really be resolved, that would actually work out well for me too.”

“Three blades and six holes… doesn’t sound pretty.”

“Pfft…”

Xigua laughed, glancing sideways at Ning Yi — the two of them now walking side by side. They passed through the small grove ahead, and by the time they reached the bend halfway up the mountain, they came upon a small clearing. Normally, from here one could see the construction site in the distance, but with the snow falling thick and heavy now, it was invisible. Their footsteps slowed. Xigua found a fallen log nearby and sat down on it.

“Once I’m back in the Miao territory, keep Sister Lu close to you more often, or Chen Fan, or Zhu Biao — with them around, even if Monk Lin came for you, he couldn’t hurt you. You’ve made a lot of enemies, and now that you’ve raised rebellion, there’s no room for missteps. Your own martial skill has never amounted to much, and you’ll never become a first-rate master — don’t neglect these things just because they’re troublesome.”

“You all keep saying I’ll never become a first-rate master. I think I already am one.” Ning Yi sat down beside her. “Hongti said the same thing once, and thinking about it afterward, I figured it was just that her standard for what counts as a master is too high. And now you’re saying the same thing… don’t forget, I knocked Tong Guan flat with a single slap right there in the Golden Hall.”

“That’s you using your position to overwhelm someone — it has little to do with actual skill.” Xigua smiled. “Standing above others, staking your life on something, flying into righteous fury, speaking with unshakable conviction — all of that is ‘position,’ not skill. You were able to overpower those powerful ministers in the Golden Hall because it was impressive, yes, but also because you’d thrown caution to the wind, left yourself no room to retreat. You can’t go all-out like that every single time. Your position isn’t meant for fighting anyway — leave that to the people who can actually go all-out in a fight.”

Her tangled history with Ning Yi wasn’t something new — these past months, the two of them had often talked and bantered together. But now, with the heavy snow falling and the world so quiet and still, sitting together on this log, she seemed to feel a bit self-conscious again. She sprang up, walked forward, and threw a punch out of habit.

“After I leave, Zhuo Xiaofeng and the others will still be here for you.”

She threw out a punch, ran two steps, then threw two more punches in quick succession.

“They were your students to begin with — keep teaching them a few more years, see what they can accomplish. They’ve already been through a good deal during their time in the Miao territory, so they should be able to help you.”

Xigua wasn’t tall to begin with, and with her still-youthful face, she looked almost delicately small. As she said these words, her voice wasn’t raised either; after finishing, she paused, glanced at Ning Yi, and seeing him neither smiling nor moving, turned her head away again and slowly pushed out another punch.

“A few years back in Hangzhou, you learned a few moves of the Overlord Blade — the Six Ways Breaking form Sister Lu taught you really is a fine method for generating power, but it’s fierce and hard on the body. To help condition you properly, Sister Lu has her own methods, but my own build was never suited to the Overlord Blade to begin with. Later I did find a way around it, and Father also taught me a set of boxing forms — meant purely for cultivating qi, tailored specifically for me. No one else would even be taught it. It’s only these past few years that I’ve come to truly grasp it well enough to teach someone else. I practice it every day — you can watch, if you like.”

“Back in Hangzhou, you talked about democracy — Lanhuandong has started showing some signs of it too. You’ve killed the emperor now; if you’re going to make your stand in the northwest, then make your stand there. But given how things are now, if you can’t hold your ground, you could always head south too. I… I hope you’ll come visit Lanhuandong sometime. There are things I just can’t figure out — you’ll have to help me with them.”

As she spoke, in the wind and snow, her fists moved from slow to fast — strikes, sweeps, hammering blows, punches, knee strikes, elbow strikes, leaps — building until her fists whirled like a wheel, like the thousand-armed Bright King himself. This boxing form, called the Little Vajra Continuous Fist, Ning Yi had seen before — back when she’d fought the three Qi brothers, taking on all three at once, pressing forward relentlessly. Watching her practice now, all he saw was the wind of her fists, no sense of raw force behind them — the figure that met his eyes seemed almost charming instead, like an endless, unbroken dance performed by this lovely young woman, with only the falling snowflakes swirling, drifting, gathering and scattering, colliding in the air with a faint whistling sound.

Each punch’s range was short, but her body advanced steadily, her breath long and even, so that her voice, from start to finish, remained light and calm even as her punches grew faster and faster, her words never wavering.

And yet, over these past six months, she’d always made a habit of picking fights and bantering with Ning Yi — but now, thinking of her coming departure, her words fell quiet for the first time. The restlessness in her heart, though, showed itself instead in her increasingly rapid punches.

“…You’re twenty-three this year, aren’t you?”

“…Ever since the Sage-Duke first rose up, in this… uh…”

As Xigua spoke, her Little Vajra Continuous Fist kept getting faster and faster — but hearing Ning Yi’s sudden, out-of-place question, both her hands and her words abruptly stopped. One fist bent slightly, the other extended forward at an angle; her expression froze, her small fist still hovering in the air for a moment, before she straightened up. “What business is that of yours?”

“How many years has it been since we married?” Ning Yi stepped down off the log.

“That whole… thing between us — does that even count as marriage?”

“After all these years, it should count as one, I’d think.”

She’d been about to strike a pose and keep punching, but at this, she stopped again, lowered her fists, and just stood there.

“It’s not as if no one’s asked for my hand these past few years — it’s just that Lanhuandong’s affairs have never let my heart settle. You… your wives, your children are already growing up. Between you and me… between you and me…”

With her punches stopped, the wind and snow settled back into their steady drift. Her words grew slightly stiff now, and so did her posture — she simply stood there, rigid, fists clenched at her sides, head tilted slightly.

Just as Ning Yi had said, she was twenty-three now — in this era, not quite an old maid, but certainly past the age most would still want her. And even at this age, in all these past years, save for that one time after he’d betrayed her, she, at twenty-three, had never once had so much as a stiff, awkward embrace in the wind and snow…

Snowflakes fell. She stood there, watching Ning Yi walk toward her. She was about to leave, and in weather like this, perhaps something was bound to happen.

At the very least… there ought to be one stiff, awkward embrace…

In the courtyard room halfway up the mountainside, the oil lamp still burned faintly. In its light, Su Tan’er was looking over some account records in her hands. When she turned, she saw that Xiao Chan and Ning Xi were already asleep on the bed not far away.

She glanced toward the window lattice again; though the thick paper covering it blocked any view outside, she could still hear the wind and snow growing louder.

On a night like this, he probably wouldn’t be coming back to rest.

She thought this to herself, then tilted her head slightly and smiled. At some point, the figure in the room blew out the lamp and climbed into bed to rest.

The wind and snow enveloped this stretch of world once more.

…

The cold winter night passed. By morning, the snow had settled into a peaceful drift across the sky, the whole world gradually taking on a silvery coat, replacing the bleak colors of late autumn.

Waking that morning, Shishi’s head felt somewhat heavy and foggy. Duan Su’e came to look after her, cooking her some porridge, and then boiling several medicinal herbs in water to help drive off the chill.

Duan Su’e had originally been a personal guard by the side of that stockade master Lu; after coming to Small Azure River, she’d been assigned to attend Shishi. One was a mountain village woman skilled in martial arts and killing, the other a delicate, melancholy former courtesan from the capital — yet no real friction had arisen between the two. This was because Shishi herself was well-read and cultured, and after arriving, hadn’t wanted much contact with the outside world, instead helping Yun Zhu sort through the various ancient texts and documents taken from the capital.

Duan Su’e had a family back in the mountains; her husband had died defending Green Wood Stockade, but she had a son now old enough to begin learning his letters. With conditions at Green Wood Stockade fairly decent lately, giving the children of the household a chance to become literate — to understand reason and grow up sensible — was the greatest hope any woman in the mountains could have. In her spare time, she’d usually chat with Shishi about goings-on in the valley, and would occasionally come ask her about the finer points of reading and writing.

The genuine courtesans of this era were, in truth, the equivalent of the trusted, beloved stars of later ages — and compared to those later stars, they possessed even greater depth, insight, and learning. Duan Su’e admired her greatly, though in her own heart, she actually admired even more this woman who, after losing her husband, had still managed to raise a child with such optimism.

“I heard that Miss Xigua, the one who came from the south last night, was going to spar with the three Qi masters. Everyone rushed over to watch, thinking there’d be a real fight…”

“That Miss Xigua — so young, yet already a grandmaster-level figure. I don’t know how she trained, but just from her Overlord Blade skill alone, she might not be far behind the Stockade Master himself. The three Qi brothers have a blood feud with her, but for now it looks like there’ll be no vengeance. Still, a father’s death is a debt that can’t be set aside — everyone knows they’ll carry it in their hearts…”

“Everyone’s talking about what happened in the capital these days. The city’s fallen — the people inside must be having a terrible time of it. Miss Li, you don’t have any family left there, do you?”

It was only in these casual exchanges with Duan Su’e that Shishi would occasionally startle awake from her frozen thoughts. She had, of course, no family left in the capital — but… Nanny Li, and all those sisters back at the pleasure house… how were they faring now? Even when this question crossed her mind, she found herself hardly daring to dwell on it.

During the first Jurchen siege of the city, she’d been down at the walls helping out, and had witnessed all manner of horrors. The reason she’d endured such scenes was to help avoid an even more unbearable outcome. But beyond that point… what ordinary people must have felt in their hearts was, in all likelihood, something too painful to think through carefully. The hysterical clashes, the screams after limbs were severed, the wailing of those burdened with all manner of wounds… what could possibly be more terrible than that? Her thoughts inevitably seized up at this point, unable to go further.

All those years at Fanlou, Nanny Li had always had a way of managing things — perhaps she’d managed to find some way to escape unharmed…

But in truth, far away in fallen Bianliang, the women of Fanlou had indeed been desperately seeking shelter, but those sisters Li Shishi had once known — most of them had been among the first group of courtesans sent into the Jurchen camp. Nanny Li Yun, the wise woman who had looked after her with such care ever since she’d entered Fanlou, had taken poison four days earlier along with several other Fanlou women and ended her life. As for the other women sent into the Jurchen camp, by now dozens of the most fiercely proud among them, unable to bear the humiliation, had already taken their own lives and had their bodies thrown out.

These were things she would only come to know many years later.

The snow in the valley kept falling without end, yet even without going out much, Shishi could sense that something in the atmosphere of the valley was shifting. Amid the falling snow, she could occasionally hear shouts and chants drifting over from across the river valley — soldiers hauling raw timber, running along the mountain paths through the heavy snow, and lines of people shouting together in unison as they shoveled snow paths between the storehouses and the work sites. The spirit carried in the voices and calls of those coming and going was noticeably different now compared to a few days earlier.

This was the change brought about by the fall of Bianliang.

After two or three days, the snow finally began to show signs of letting up. During this time, Su Tan’er, Nie Yunzhu, and others had all come to visit her. The news Duan Su’e brought was mostly related to the Western Xia’s military campaign — the valley was in constant discussion over whether to lend aid — and then, suddenly, another piece of news arrived.

A few days earlier, the old general Zhong Shidao, who had guarded the northwest for many years, had passed away at his ancestral home in Qingjian City.

Hearing this news, Shishi sat stunned for a long while. During the first defense of Bianliang, the generals holding the city had been Left Chancellor Li Gang and this renowned old general Zhong. Though her own standing was worlds apart from his, this old man had, in large part, served as the very pillar that allowed Bianliang to hold — and in her heart, Shishi’s respect for him knew no bounds.

The snow had stopped by this day. Shishi stepped out of her room; the whole world lay blanketed in white. In a nearby courtyard, someone was moving about, and on the rooftop of that courtyard, a woman sat cross-legged, one hand lightly propping up her chin. The woman wore a white ermine-trimmed robe and white snow boots, her delicate, almost youthful face bringing to mind the daughters of great households from the water towns of the south. And yet Shishi knew that this woman, sitting on the rooftop looking every bit like an innocent young girl, had killed more people than could be counted — she was none other than the rebels’ commander in the south, Overlord Blade Liu Xigua.

She was always fond of bantering with Ning Yi, and Shishi could tell there was something unresolved, something not quite proper, between the two of them. Over these years, just how many strange friends this childhood companion of hers — skilled in both letters and arms — had made as he made his way through the world, and how much he’d been through, she truly had no idea.

According to Duan Su’e, this young woman was also set to head south within the next day or two. Perhaps because of the impending parting, there was a certain lost, reluctant look on her face as she sat there on the roof.

That she could sit on the rooftop meant Ning Yi must be in the room below, giving a lecture to a group of mid-level officers. As for the subject matter of his talk, Shishi felt somewhat reluctant to listen. She skirted around that courtyard and continued along the mountain path, where, in the distance, she could see the bustling settlement down in the valley — several thousand people scattered across it, the snow that had fallen these past few days already pushed to the sides. On one flank of the mountain, dozens of men shouted in unison as they pushed a great boulder down the slope; by the riverbed, soldiers preparing to build a water-retention dam were digging out a diversion channel, and the clanging of the blacksmith’s forge could be clearly heard even from here.

Children of all ages were already running about, helping with the work.

She passed through a stretch of woods on one side, and the crowds grew thicker — it seemed several women were heading this way to watch the excitement. Shishi knew there was a large flat clearing halfway up the mountain on this side, and before long she caught sight, from a distance, of the soldiers already assembled — two square formations, roughly a thousand men or so in total, with someone speaking loudly at the front.

“…We have cannon on our side — once fully assembled, even Western Xia’s fearsome Level-Mountain Iron Kites are nothing to fear… What we truly need to worry about are the Western Xia foot-soldiers… The terrain around us is mostly mountainous, and when the fighting comes, these foot troops move fastest through mountain paths — every unit must know how to counter them…”

The voice giving instructions carried over from a distance. Not far off, Duan Su’e spotted her and came over to greet her.

“Miss Li, you’ve come out for a walk…”

“Sister Su’e, what’s…”

“We’re sending out troops.”

“What?”

“The Western Xia army has already advanced near Qingjian City. We’re sending out two units, five hundred men each, to harass the besieging force from both sides.”

“The Western Xia… there are a lot of them, aren’t there?”

“Western Xia has raised nearly a hundred thousand troops. Even if we sent our whole force, there’d be little chance of victory — and with old General Zhong gone now, we don’t even have anyone left who can speak for us with the Western Army. These thousand men are only meant to tie the Western Xia down a little during the siege. Most importantly, if the city falls, they can strike at the Western Xia foot-soldiers from within the mountain forests, buying time for the refugees to flee faster… That’s about all we can do.”

Having spent months together, Duan Su’e knew Shishi had a kind heart, and quietly shared what she knew. In truth, with deep winter already upon them, Small Azure River’s preparations for the season were far from complete, and part of the dam and diversion work still had to be finished before the spring floods came next year — manpower was already stretched thin, so sending out these thousand elite troops was no easy decision at all.

The two of them talked as they climbed higher up the slope, the valley, training grounds, and formations below gradually coming into view. Then Shishi heard the thousand-strong ranks shout in unison; the formation stood firm — though only a thousand strong, their morale ran high, a fierce, killing spirit rising into the air!

All around lay white snow, the valleys and mountain gaps stretching far apart, an endless sea of winter white. The column of a thousand men wound its way out through the mountain range, snaking like a great dragon.

Shishi parted her lips slightly, breathing out a puff of white mist.

Ever since the Wurui Camp’s rebellion half a year ago, breaking through Bianliang, Ning Yi killing the emperor before the assembled court — and now, with the Jurchens sweeping south and breaking Bianliang, the Central Plains thrown into turmoil, the Western Xia advancing from the south, and old General Zhong now gone from this world — and yet here, in this northwestern land, the Wurui Camp’s morale remained this fierce and unshaken even amid the chaos. Such spirit, she had never once witnessed in all those long days defending the walls of Bianliang…

Was the realm — was the Wu Dynasty itself — truly coming to an end?

Her body swayed; in the reflected glare of the white snow, she felt a faint wave of dizziness.

Where… should I go from here—

…

Love or fear, whatever the countless emotions that stir in the human heart, none of them could stop what was bound to happen. That winter, history rolled forward once more like some great wheel.

In the twelfth month, the Western Xia broke through Qingjian and several cities around Yanzhou one after another. In the bitter cold of winter, the people of the northwest fled their homes, refugees scattering in every direction. Zhong Shidao’s nephew, Zhong Lie, leading the remnants of the Western Army, was pinned down by the Jurchens on the northern bank of the Yellow River, unable to break free. When Qingjian City fell, the Zhong family’s ancestral hall and graves were entirely destroyed. The Zhong family’s Western Army, which had guarded the Wu Dynasty’s northwest for over a hundred years across five generations of renowned commanders, burned out its last light here.

In the capital, the months of unrest and humiliation continued to fester. During the siege, the Jurchens repeatedly demanded gold, silver, and valuables; the Kaifeng prefectural office ransacked the city, seizing gold and silver from the homes of both rich and poor throughout Bianliang, as though conducting mass confiscations, and handed it all over to the Jurchens — including the imperial palace itself, which had by now been stripped almost entirely bare.

This was only the tip of the iceberg of Bianliang’s tragedy. Over the course of several months, the number of women sent or seized into the Jurchen camps from within Bianliang numbered in the tens of thousands. Just within the palace alone — the Empress Dowager, the Empress, and the consorts and maids and singing girls beneath her — and among the officials’ and wealthy households’ women and wives throughout the city, several thousand more. At the same time, the Jurchens also conducted massive sweeps through Bianliang, seizing craftsmen and able-bodied young men and women as slaves.

This cycle of plundering wealth and seizing men and women continued without pause for months. By the start of the following year, the stockpiles that had once filled Bianliang were entirely exhausted; the people within the city, having eaten through their grain, then their cats and dogs, then even tree bark, began exchanging children to eat, and countless numbers starved to death. The Wu court, still nominally in existence, set up stations within the city where residents could trade valuables and treasured possessions for a bit of grain to survive on — these goods were then funneled straight into the Jurchen military camps.

By the third month of that year, the Jurchens finally began marching large numbers of captives north. By then, the women who had died by their own hand rather than submit, or who had been tortured to death through repeated abuse, in the Jurchen camps already numbered as many as ten thousand. And along that road north, the Jurchen camps continued, day after day, to throw out the bodies of women who had died after enduring endless torment and degradation.

Though later historians would prefer to record the fates of the several thousand consorts, imperial princesses, and daughters of high officials and wealthy households — or the humiliations suffered by the man who had once sat upon the throne — as proof of the horror of it all, in truth, these women of some standing had, even amid the Jurchens’ abuse, still been shown some small measure of restraint. It was the tens of thousands of ordinary women and commoners who suffered what could truly be called treatment fit for pigs and dogs along that road, beaten and killed at the slightest whim.

By the time they reached Jurchen territory, of the men and women taken captive from the south in this campaign, over a hundred thousand still remained alive even after accounting for the dead — and these hundred thousand and more were sold off cheaply and carelessly, the women reduced to prostitution, the men to slave labor. From the beginning of that thousand-li road of blood heading north, through the years and decades that followed for the rest of their lives, what they endured was truly…

A horror beyond all human description!